


I've Built My Dreams Around You

by fwooshy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Christmas Music, HP Wireless Festive Minifest 2020, M/M, New York City
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27815299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fwooshy/pseuds/fwooshy
Summary: Harry loves Draco. But starting over is hard, even when you're in love.A Christmas fic based off the songFairytale of New York.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 12
Kudos: 98
Collections: Wireless Festive Minifest 2020





	I've Built My Dreams Around You

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to [Erebeus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erebeus/pseuds/Erebeus) for the beta!

The bells were ringing out for Christmas day.

Harry tried lifting his head. It lolled back, too heavy to stay upright. His vision swam. "Where," he slurred. His breath smelled like vodka and vomit.

"Welcome to the drunk tank," a leathered voice cackled.

Harry blinked. A grizzled man sat on the bench across from him. He wore a long camel coat and a bowler hat that slipped over his brows. 

"How long have I been here?" Harry croaked from the concrete floor.

The man snorted. "Hell if I know. At my age, the hours feel like years and the years like seconds." He showed all his teeth when he talked. Harry thought he could knock them out with one punch.

The man kept talking. "I reckon I’ve maybe one year left."

"You don’t seem too bad," Harry said. The man seemed old, but not sickly.

"Sure, I’ll keep breathing for a couple years more. But I’m talking about living. Proper living." The man tugged his fingers through his beard. "My wife passed last month. Not much left I want to do without her." He closed his eyes and started humming a song that Harry couldn’t put a name to, but recognised from when Draco would have the radio on in his car.

Harry looked away.

❆ ❆ ❆

Harry hadn’t bothered with getting a driver’s license when they’d first moved to New York. "You don’t need a car in New York City," he told Draco, but Draco got one anyway, the legitimate way. He tried to do everything the right way these days. Often that meant the hard way or the long way, and on his own, without help. He mistrusted things when they came too easily to him. Harry knew what it was like to need to prove something, so he didn’t comment when Draco did his thirty hours of driving school, or when Draco invited a study group over to their flat to review before the driving exam.

They’d taken over the kitchen table, so Harry met them when he went to fill up his glass in the sink. On either side of Draco were two middle-aged Asian women he called Aiye One and Aiye Two. Across from him was a brown-faced man named Abdul with a beard that grew to his chest.

"We get along because we’re the immigrants in class," Aiye One explained to Harry. "Everyone else, they’re kids."

Harry had never thought of himself as an immigrant before. He didn’t think that moving from London to New York would be that much of a change because the language was the same. But if being an immigrant meant not fitting in, or not knowing what everyone else knew as effortlessly as breathing, then maybe he was an immigrant. He hadn’t been prepared for how hard it would be to start over.

The night of Draco’s exam, Harry brought back an extra egg tart from the bakery where he worked. Draco scarfed it down before pressing a crumbly kiss on Harry’s mouth. Then he led Harry down to the alley behind their flat where he'd parked the car he bought used from Abdul’s brother. It was graveyard blue like the one Uncle Vernon had been so proud of fifteen years back, but it wasn’t 1989 anymore, and the sun had peeled splotches of paint off the top. Draco got in from the driver’s side, so Harry mirrored him to the passenger’s and waited for Draco to lean over the gear stick and pull up the lock before getting in.

Harry cranked down the window and stuck his head out while Draco fiddled with the radio and landed on some station that Harry didn’t care for. It was just beginning to get warm, and the streets smelled faintly of sewage. He missed the wireless at the Burrow.

Draco drove them around the block. The street looked different from the middle of the road—bigger, like stepping out of a photograph. There was a basketball game flickering on from an open window. Two women smoked from a fire escape, their bare feet dangling over the awning of a laundromat.

There wasn’t any empty curb left by the time they circled back to the alley, so Draco parked three blocks down. Harry was still in his slippers. "You don’t need a car in the city. That’s kind of the point," he said because he was annoyed at having to walk so far.

Draco put his hands in his pockets. Harry hated how Draco didn’t fight back anymore. Whenever Harry lashed out, it was as though his fists went straight through Draco. It always threw Harry off-balance and made him sick with regret.

"I’m sorry," Harry whispered. An itching fear crawled up his chest.

"It’s alright—I get it," Draco said.

When they got home, Harry pressed Draco up against the wall and said, "I love you," soft and desperate, and they kissed until Draco said he needed to take a shower before he could have sex.

Harry undressed and got in their bed and thought about how Draco said that he understood when he didn't. Harry knew that Draco bought the car so that he could leave anytime he wanted. Draco didn’t get how messed up that made Harry feel, knowing that he could come back from the bakery one night and find the car gone. And then he would be stuck in New York, without a way to follow.

When Draco came to bed, Harry pretended he was already asleep.

❆ ❆ ❆

Harry worked at a bakery Wednesdays through Sundays from five to four. He’d applied to fifteen other jobs before getting it, and still, that was only because Aiye One worked there too, and put in a good word for him.

And even then the work was hard, and it didn’t pay enough, and when he got home, Draco was often sullen or busy or quiet. More nights than Harry liked to admit he questioned why he was in New York at all. He’d had an easy job at the Ministry, and friends who were dear to him, people who respected him. It was a futile, circuitous line of questioning because of course, he was here for Draco.

London made Draco sick. The insults, the shut-outs, the side-eyes. The constant reminders of what happened and what he did because of it. They went to New York for a fresh start. But New York only kept Draco sick in a different way.

One night, Draco caught Harry with his hands hovered above the drawer where they locked their wands. The drawer was meant as a safeguard so that they could still get to their wands if someone came to kill them, but nobody ever came. Instead, the drawer grew to be a constant reminder that Harry didn’t have to do this, that he could have it all back if he wanted to. If he just gave up on Draco. It was an ugly temptation. The choice made Harry feel grimy even though he knew he wouldn’t take it, even though it wasn’t much of a choice at all.

Draco stood like a shadow in the doorway. "You can do it. I don’t mind."

"I’m not going to."

"But you want to."

"I think about it. Some days I want to. But I won’t."

"You’ll give in one day, so you might as well now."

Harry took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He hated when Draco tried to goad him. Draco thought he wasn’t a good person, so he didn't deserve anything good either. This thinking usually manifested when he refrained from new shoes or expensive dinners or getting around by Apparition, things that were minor enough that Harry could almost understand. But it was a lot harder to deal with when he thought he didn’t deserve Harry.

Harry sighed. "Why do you always do this?"

"I’m not stopping you from doing anything."

"That’s the  _ problem _ ," Harry snarled. "You never want to stop me from doing anything, so you never tell me what you’re actually thinking. But I know you still get worked up about it. You let all that negative shit build up in you. I feel like I’m tiptoeing around you just waiting for you to blow up one day and leave. I. God. I just want us to  _ fight _ sometimes."

"Are you even hearing yourself?  _ I want us to fight sometimes? _ We argue all the time. Just this morning I yelled at you for not pulling your hair out of the drain."

"That’s not what I meant," Harry started saying, but Draco snatched up his pillow and stormed out the room. Draco did this often enough for Harry to know that he was going to sleep on the sofa tonight.

Harry thought about what he meant, and in the end, he was glad he didn’t manage to say it out loud, because even he knew it was pathetic. What he wanted was to be so essential to Draco that Draco could never leave him. What he wanted was the security a heart got from beating in a body. He wanted Draco to be a corpse without him.

Draco slipped into their bed just past three. Harry wrapped his arms around Draco’s waist and pulled his back into his chest, feeling Draco’s heart beating unsteadily beneath his palm. Harry’s own heart was itchy all night.

"I love you," Harry whispered.

"Love you too," Draco murmured. It was the first time he said it back. He wouldn’t make it a habit.

❆ ❆ ❆

Draco came back one day in December with a paper bag of Christmas decorations and a tree the size of a house-elf. Harry made hot cocoa and drank it while Draco hung glittering baubles up until each branch bent heavy toward the carpet. Harry was wearing a green jumper with an H stitched on it that Mrs Weasley knitted him the year before they left for New York. Draco packed his Weasley jumper too, but he made a show of not wearing it, as another example of comfort he didn't deserve.

Draco sat on the arm of Harry’s chair and wrapped his hands around the mug so that they interlaced with Harry’s. "Is that for me?" he murmured and took a sip before Harry could warn him that it’d gone cold. Draco always forgot little things like that, like how Muggle mugs weren’t charmed to keep warm or Muggle showers didn’t heat up straight away, little gestures that pricked little holes in Harry whenever he noticed them. It always reminded Harry that no matter how much he gave up to start over, Draco gave up more.

Two years ago Draco had said, "Being in London makes me sick. I’m sorry." They’d been dating for about a year at that point, but it’d felt more like years, or decades, so Harry had understood that  _ here _ not only meant England but the entire wizarding world, including magic itself.

Harry had also known that  _ I’m sorry _ meant Draco had thought Harry wouldn’t want to come with him. But it had almost been easy for Harry to decide to give everything up. He would’ve done anything to keep himself from getting kicked out of Draco’s life. Not much changed since, in that regard.

"It’s alright; I like it better cold anyway." Draco leaned down and kissed Harry on the mouth. He tasted like chocolate. Harry wound a hand up Draco’s jumper and rubbed Draco’s back until Draco shuddered and slid into his lap.

That evening, Draco drove them down three blocks to the dive bar that Aiye Two ran with her Irish husband. It took him more time parking than it would’ve taken them to walk there. But Harry could tell that he was proud of his parallel parking skills, so Harry went along with it, beaming.

Aiye Two waved them over to the bar where she had her earphones in listening to a _ Learn English Now! _ book on tape. "What you think?" she grinned, spreading her arms wide, "I do gift wrapping."

Wrapping paper of undiscerning festivity covered the entire bar. There were Santa sleighs taped against menorahs and snowflakes and hot wheels and barbies and babies’ rattles. Presents of every size hung from the ceiling between blooms of pastel paper lanterns. Icicles rimmed the top shelf, twinkling handles of bourbon amber under their lights.

"It’s amazing," Harry said when he stopped looking around long enough to pull his gloves off. Draco was leaning up against the bar, his hair shining bright as a star. He called Harry over, and Harry came, dazzled. Everything in his life was brilliant. He never wanted this night to end.

❆ ❆ ❆

Hermione cornered him at the bakery while Harry was dealing with a receipt jam during rush hour. It wasn’t a good time. He snarled at her to leave, which only motivated her to stand in the corner and wait even more determinably.

"I don’t want to talk to you," Harry lied. He missed her so much. But he and Draco had decided to do a clean break. That meant nothing of their past left behind, and that included Hermione.

"It won’t take long." She looked to be on the verge of tears. "I’ll  _ Obliviate _ you after if you want. You won’t even remember. Please."

She followed him back to his flat. Harry didn’t let her in, but he thought about her all night. Draco didn’t notice, or if he did, he didn’t say anything. He was in an intense creative phase that meant that he spent all of his energy writing, or thinking about writing. There wasn’t room for Harry in that phase.

"Here she comes again," Aiye One murmured under her breath as Hermione walked through the bakery door the next day.

"Stubborn," Harry whispered back, trying to keep the affection from his voice. He was heading out to finish his Christmas shopping, so he told Hermione that she had thirty minutes, and let her follow him down the aisles at the department store.

"It’s a job. You won’t need to come back to England. It’d be here. But it’d be for the Ministry back home. You’re the only one I trust to do it. It’s — it’s  _ awful _ right now, Harry. I barely made the votes for Minister of Magic, and I was up against a Muggleborn-hating bigot who ran on a platform of exterminating werewolves and veelas. Half of my staff are turncoats. I  _ need _ you. England needs you."

Harry fished out the price tag of a long camel coat and imagined Draco wearing it. It cost as much as their rent. Harry scowled. "You came all the way to tell me about a job?"

Tears started spilling out of Hermione’s eyes. Her voice was thick and choked. " _ Harry. _ You have to know that there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about you. I miss talking to you so much it hurts. You don’t understand how hard it’s been since you left. You  _ don’t _ ."

Harry took the coat off the rack and tried it on. It was heavy and warm. He felt safe in it, and he liked the colour.

Hermione continued to talk. "But I respect you too much to try and pull you back for personal reasons. And yet most days I still think I would try if there were any chance that it would work. I’m only asking you now because I have no other choice. They’re legitimising  _ genocide _ . If you don’t do this, everything we fought for will  _ die _ , don’t you see?"

Harry thought of how small his world was in New York. The three subway stops from his flat to the bakery. The set of four white bowls and four white plates in their kitchen cabinet, next to two boxes of cereal. The charming chrome of their refrigerator where he’d see the blurred reflection of Draco frying up eggs as he opened it to get the orange juice. The only thing he wanted to fight for these days was to stay in Draco’s life.

"You’re going to have to catch me up," Harry said, bracing himself. He was afraid of what he’d see when his world opened up again.

She followed him up to the counter where he paid for the coat. It was expensive, but Draco deserved it.

❆ ❆ ❆

"I saw Hermione yesterday," Harry confessed that night while he was getting ready for bed. Draco was already under the covers with his bedside light switched on. Harry felt a knot of guilt building in his throat even though Draco didn’t say anything. Harry had promised he wouldn’t go back to magic, but he wasn’t so sure now.

"She has a job for me. She said England needs me."

Draco closed the book around his finger. "Are you going to do it?"

"I haven’t decided."

"I don’t want to hold you back."

Harry slammed the wardrobe door shut. "Can’t you just tell me what you’re actually thinking for once?"

"If you want to do it, you should do it. I don’t see how anything I —"

"I want to do what  _ you _ want! How do you not get that? I want you to think about what I’m doing, and then think about how you would feel if I did that! Don’t I matter to you at all? Do you even care —"

"Of course I care." Draco’s voice was soft. He pushed the book away and scooted up against the headboard, pulling his legs into his chest.

"Okay."

"I’m. I don’t want you to do it. I mean, obviously I don’t." He looked away. 

"Okay, then. I won’t do it." Harry would tell Hermione tomorrow. No go, sorry. She could figure it out without him. She was smart enough.

Draco swallowed, his fingers dragging against the sheets. He looked nervous. "I don’t want you to be unhappy either."

Harry sat down on the bed at Draco’s feet. "I’ll be happy if I have you."

"No, you won’t. You haven’t been happy. You think I don’t see it, but I do. This." He paused, looking around at the dim room helplessly. "This isn’t enough for you. I see the way you look at that drawer. I know you miss magic. I know you miss your old life."

Harry took Draco’s bare ankles into his hands and thumbed circles at the joint. "I know what we have isn’t perfect. But I’m always happier with you than without you. I’ll always choose you."

But Draco shook his head. "You shouldn’t have to choose." His breath was coming out heavy, but he didn’t cry.

"What do you mean?"

Draco looked into Harry’s eyes. His eyes were red, where he wasn’t crying. "I want you to take it."

Harry’s heart started beating too fast. He realised then that this wasn’t the answer he wanted. He wanted Draco to say no. He wanted Draco to say that he wasn’t allowed. He wanted to stay in his cosy world where there were only him and Draco and their tiny flat that barely fit their tiny Christmas tree. He felt safe here, even if he wasn’t happy.

"What are you going to do?" Harry asked desperately. He wrung the fringes of Draco’s pyjama bottoms. "Hermione said I could stay in New York. I’d have to use my wand and maybe ward this place again, and we’d have to get rid of the television. But nothing else — nothing else would change, I  _ swear _ —"

"No, Harry," Draco said. He gently nudged his feet away so that they hung off the side of the bed. "Things will change." He reached out a hand and caressed Harry’s cheek. "It’ll be alright." And then he got up to fill his glass.

Harry was blinking up at the ceiling when he felt the mattress dip under Draco’s weight. Draco turned off his bedside lamp. They’d need to change the lamp too, to something that could hold a  _ Lumos _ charm. Something not plugged in. Everyone knew that magic didn’t work with electricity. Draco was right that things would change.

Harry rolled onto his side so that he faced Draco’s back. "I love you," he said.

❆ ❆ ❆

Harry saved a taro bun for when Hermione came again during lunch. She ate it in three bites. "Sorry," she said behind a swallow of coffee, "International Portkeys make me  _ so hungry _ , you have no idea. I feel like Crookshanks after we’ve been out for the weekend."

"I get it," Harry laughed. "How’re the kids?"

Hermione gave him a piteous smile. "A lot’s happened. We don’t have to catch up on that yet. It’d be good if I had an answer from you first."

"Err — yeah," Harry said. His head was all out of sorts. The morning had been rough. He hadn’t been able to sleep, so he woke up late and didn’t have a chance to shower before shoving his way through the subway. And then their supplier missed their shipment of red bean paste, so the head baker spent a whole hour yelling at them, which meant that they needed to finish three hours of baking in two before the doors opened for the day. Harry hated his job. It didn’t make him or the world any better off; it just took up space. But Harry didn’t know where Draco was mentally either.

Draco said he wanted Harry to take the job. But then he said things would change. But then he said that it would be alright. Harry wanted to believe that it’d be alright more than anything. If it’d be alright, he’d start believing in Santa. He’d even stop laughing whenever anyone on the telly said, "It’s a Christmas miracle!"

"I’ll do it."

Hermione’s grin was so wide it pinched her cheeks. Her whole body seemed to hum with excitement. "Draco’s okay with it?"

"He… he said it would be alright. But that things would change."

Hermione stilled. "Are things alright with you two?"

"Yeah, I mean. I love him."

"Maybe some change would be good," Hermione suggested firmly. "I’ve always liked a little change. Nothing’s duller than the same thing day after day."

"Yeah." Harry thought of how he stirred the same amount of flour into the same number of eggs and tablespoons of oil and grams of sugar five days a week for the last two years.

"This is the best Christmas Eve present ever," Hermione declared. And then she winced. "Don’t tell my kids I said that. I’ll see you after the holidays, then? We’ll start on the Monday after New Years."

Harry felt a bubbling brightness forcing its way up through his chest. He’d missed Hermione. Maybe it would be alright.

❆ ❆ ❆

Draco wasn’t in the flat when Harry came home that night. Harry stuck his head out the window and looked down at the empty space where Draco had parked the car last night. He went to their tiny tree, to their wrapped presents. The camel coat was gone.

Harry’s heart pounded. He felt dizzy and nauseous and out of control. He stumbled over to Aiye Two’s bar, but it was closed for Christmas Eve. The pub next door wasn’t though, so Harry staggered in, and took a seat at the bar. The bartender's black beard was so greasy that Harry thought of Snape. He slammed a vodka seltzer in front of Harry and told him it’d be six dollars, so Harry put forty on the table and drank five.

Halfway through his sixth drink, Harry looked down the bar at someone the wrong way, and they came up to him and asked him what he was looking at with his fists. Harry fought back. He blacked out. And then he’d woken up in the drunk tank.

❆ ❆ ❆

The man was singing. You _ took my dreams from me, when I first found you _ .

His skin was grey and wrinkled down the neck between the lapels of his long camel coat. Harry didn’t need any reminders to think of Draco, but the coat didn’t help. For a moment he was convinced it was the same coat that he'd wrapped and left under their tree, and that Draco had given it to the first man who’d take it. Harry stood up and stumbled to the toilet, retching.

He could fix this. He would find Hermione and tell her that he changed his mind. And then maybe he’d call into one of those radio stations that Draco loved and say, "Come back. I didn’t do it. Come back. I’m sorry." He’d do anything for Draco. He only needed to wait until Draco was well enough to do the same for him.

A uniformed officer came to their cell and wrinkled her nose at the smell. "Someone’s posted your bail," she told Harry, although her face plainly said that she didn’t think he deserved it.

Harry lurched out the double doors. It was three in the morning of Christmas Day, and lights were twinkling loudly against the quiet of the street. A graveyard blue car was parked across the lane with the engine still running. Draco was leaning up against the door, his hands in the pockets of his long camel coat, the one that Harry had bought him. He was looking up at Harry.

Harry’s heart pounded. He stumbled down the steps and across the street, the toes of his trainers soaking in the snow.

"I — I didn’t —," Draco started stammering as soon as Harry reached him. "I. I meant it when I said you didn’t need to choose. I can do it. I can do it for you. I — I just needed some space. I didn’t mean it like I was leaving, I didn’t — I know I can be goading or contradictory or — or, you know. But I would never  _ leave _ . I would never just — give up. You know that — that, I — I love you. I  _ love _ you. You  _ know _ that."

Snowflakes were melting on Draco’s pale face, sliding down like tears. Harry pressed up against him so that his arms nudged inside Draco’s coat and his face nestled in the crook of Draco’s neck. 

"I thought I was dreaming when you said you loved me," Harry murmured. He felt sober for the first time in years.

"I’m scared," Draco whispered back.

"I know, I know." Harry stroked Draco’s back. "It’ll be hard, but we’ll do it together."

Draco shivered. 

Harry held him tighter. "How did you know I was here?"

He could feel Draco making a face against his shoulder. "It was an emergency, and we’ve always said the wands were there for an emergency, so I — I —" he hesitated, hurrying his words together, "I  _ castalocationspell _ ."

Harry never loved Draco more. Draco, putting aside his fears to cast magic for  _ Harry. _ Draco, admitting he was afraid, and not arguing when Harry said they’d tackle it together — 

It was the best Christmas ever. Harry laughed, looking up as he swayed Draco side to side, his arms still wrapped around Draco. "Happy Christmas!" he shouted to the sky.

Draco snorted. He pushed Harry away, but he twisted his mouth like he was trying not to smile. "Happy Christmas, your arse."

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Christmas fic based off the song [Fairytale of New York](https://genius.com/The-pogues-fairytale-of-new-york-lyrics). The song has such a strong narrative that I basically copied the whole thing. Aiye One and Aiye Two translates to Auntie One and Auntie Two. Aiye Two's bar is a tribute to one of my favorite holiday bars in San Francisco - Pacific Cocktail Haven. And I stole a line off of Frank Ocean's Ivy even though it didn't even really fit, because I love him. Thank you so much again to [Erebeus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erebeus/pseuds/Erebeus) for the thoughtful comments that really helped me improve this fic. :)
> 
> Thank you for reading! 💛 You can find me on [dw](https://fwooshy.dreamwidth.org/) and [tumblr](https://fw00shy.tumblr.com/).


End file.
